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Author: Fuzzy Slippers

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Fuzzy Slippers

I am a constitutional conservative, a writer, and an editor.

Follow me on Twitter @fuzislippers

In 2015, then-14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was caught up in leftist "zero tolerance" policies when he brought a homemade clock to school.  The clock, school officials said, looked like a bomb. The teen was sent to the principal's office when his clock started beeping in English class.  He was subsequently suspended from school for three days and arrested for making a "hoax bomb."  The charges were later dropped.

An American Idol episode filmed last fall and aired this week has created some controversy.  Katy Perry, a judge on the show, surprise-kissed a young man on the lips just before his audition. He told the NYT that this was his first kiss, and that he had been saving this milestone for his first relationship.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) has proposed his first budget, and it's loaded with new taxes and tax policy that is intended to raise approximately $1.6 billion in new tax revenue. The tax increases are being met with mixed reactions from New Jersey Democrats; some favor the proposals, some don't think they will raise enough money for Murphy's progressive agenda, and some are opposed to a key new tax, the millionaire's tax.

Earlier this week Senate Democrats introduced a tax plan designed to show what Democrats can be expected to do should they win back majorities in Congress. Their press release refers to their avoidance of "gimmicks and giveaways"; this appears to be a reference to the bonuses, pay raises, and private sector investment and job creation afforded by the new tax law.  All of which, the Democrat proposal would roll back.

Since President Trump's election, the left has morphed into a bizarre mixture of fascist groups "against fascism," free speech groups that fanatically shut-down speech with which they disagree, and pro-illegal immigrant groups that ignore DACA.  Among all this counterintuitive bluster are the anti-Trump leftists who have taken their Trump Derangement Syndrome to brand-new levels of cringe-worthy derangement.

It's clear that Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) wants to be president.  What's not clear is in what country she wants to president. She wants to be president of a country with no borders, with a Supreme Court that bases its decisions on "feelings" rather than law, with few (preferably no?) gun rights for citizens, with "free" college, with government-run (i.e. single payer) healthcare, with severely restricted speech, with unrestricted abortion funded by taxpayers.  To be fair to Harris, this is the same imaginary country in which all Democrat presidential hopefuls aspire to be president. Harris' ongoing, if not yet announced, 2020 presidential campaign is currently focused on flouting foiling our nation's immigration laws.

The New York Times has experienced an amazing epiphany: Sweden's open-door policy to refugees from Muslim countries has created a crisis of violence and crime in Sweden.  While they myopically attribute this crisis to "gangs," they do dabble with the idea that integration of foreign nationals into the existing socio-cultural framework of the host country may be desirable after all. This is a remarkable shift given the NYT's attempts to cover up the escalation of violence, rape, and crime perpetrated by refugees in Sweden.  Remember their feigned shock when President Trump last year pointed out, quite rightly, that Sweden was feeling the negative affects of letting hundreds of thousands of refugees flood their country?

President Trump has a fantastic sense of humor, the left?  Not so much.  The humorless left is in full meltdown mode after last night's Gridiron dinner at which Trump made some hilarious remarks about the various idiocies of the media and Democrats during his first full year in office. Ignoring many of the self-deprecating remarks about his administration, they seem particularly hysterical about Trump's joke that Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) should take an IQ test.

Earlier this week, Dick's Sporting Goods announced that it will no longer sell AR-15 style and semi-automatic rifles.  This announcement seems a bit cynical given that Dick's stopped selling AR-15 style and semi-automatic rifles six years ago, though its affiliate Field & Stream had returned to selling them five years ago.  As of this week's announcement, Field & Stream's 35 stores will no longer carry these rifles. Dick's did announce something new, though:  they are imposing their own age limit on gun purchasers.  Regardless of state or federal law, Dick's set its own age requirement for the purchase of firearms at 21.  Not to be outdone, Walmart soon followed suit, as did Kroger's.

Despite Spain's attempts to stop the Catalonia Independence Referendum, Catalans voted for independence.  Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy moved to impose direct rule. Catalan's deposed leader Carles Puigdemont has been living in exile in Belgium since October. 2017 and was thought likely to run for regional president.  Puigdemont, however, has announced that he will not be running for president and has instead endorsed Jordi Sànchez.  Sànchez is currently in jail in Madrid.

Few things make me as simultaneously sad and frustrated as what is happening to higher education in this country.  In an apparent effort to boost the number of anti-Second Amendment high school walkouts, colleges and universities are now announcing that suspensions for anti-gun protests won't harm their chance of admission. It's not difficult to understand from these announcements that such suspensions would actually make the applicant more attractive to these very institutes of higher learning.  In this socio-cultural climate, nothing says "top admissions candidate" like a proven record of social justice agitation and protest.

As the Democratic Party lurches leftward and adopts a distinctly socialist stance, its political center has also shifted left.  Amazingly, this new Democratic Party considers among its centrists those figures we tend to think of as radical leftists:  Obama, Hillary, and to a lesser extent Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Figures once considered fringe even among the left are now hailed as the voice of the party; these figures include self-proclaimed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and radical progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).  Sanders and more recently Warren have been strong proponents of single-payer and "free" college.  Thanks in large part to Bernie, much of the left, the Democrat base, thinks of itself as "Democratic Socialist."